Cultivated Meat: Challenges, Opportunities, Future

In this episode from the archives, originally published in February 2021, Jennifer Doudna, who won the 2020 Nobel Prize for the co-discovery of CRISPR-Cas9 with Emmanuelle Charpentier, chats with Vijay Pande, general partner at a16z Bio + Health. Together, they discuss  the future of biology, whether discovery itself can be engineered and industrialized, and how biology can shape our future.

In this episode, Jorge Conde, general partner at a16z Bio + Health, talks with Josh Mandel-Brehm, founding CEO of CAMP4. Together, they talk about how CAMP4 focuses on regulatory RNA (and what that means), how Josh thinks about platform companies, and what he’s learned as the founding CEO of the company.

In today's episode, Sam Corcos, CEO and cofounder of Levels Health, chats with Vijay Pande, general partner at a16z Bio + Health, about how Sam cofounded Levels, how to decide who becomes CEO if you have multiple cofounders, Levels’ approach to company culture and meetings, and how Sam thinks about the complicated world of healthcare regulations.Additional reading:Levels' public investor updates, as mentioned by Sam in the episode

In this episode, Kurt Adams, CEO of Optum Financial, chats with Daisy Wolf, investment partner for a16z Bio + Health, and Marc Andrusko, investment partner for a16z focused on fintech, about Optum Financial, how consumers might interact with fintech while seeking care or participating in healthy behaviors, and what a fintech-integrated version of the healthcare experience could look like.Additional reading from us:Payvidors, Unbundled: Opportunities in Healthcare FintechHealthtech x Fintech’s Biggest Prize: The Financial Operating System for Healthcare 

In this episode, Joe Lonsdale, founder and managing partner at 8VC, joins Vijay Pande, founding partner of a16z Bio + Health, and Olivia Webb, editorial lead. Together, we talk about what factors lead to innovation vs stagnation, monopoly power in healthcare, and policy ideas to incentivize change, growth, and dynamism.

In this episode, Julie Yoo, general partner, and Jay Rughani, investment partner at a16z Bio + Health, talk to Kate Ryder, founder and CEO of Maven; Amanda Rees, cofounder and CEO of Bold Health; and Bill Porter, VP and GM, International, of Butterfly Network, about their B2C2B go-to-market motion.This episode was originally recorded in late 2021, but it's still really relevant to builders, especially those exploring the B2C2B go-to-market motion. We talked about B2C2B in-depth in the second chapter of our Digital Health Builders Founder's Playbooks, also available at: https://a16z.com/digital-health-builders/And finally, our last chapter of the Founder's Playbooks is coming soon, so hit subscribe and stay tuned!

In this episode, Kevin Parker, cofounder and CEO of Cartography Biosciences, joins Jorge Conde, general partner at a16z Bio + Health, and Olivia Webb, editorial lead, to discuss immuno-oncology, current challenges in drug targeting, and the mechanisms Cartography and others are using to advance the field of immunotherapeutics. This episode dives deep into the science behind immuno-oncology — but you don't necessarily have to be a scientist to follow along. You'll never look at a smoothie the same way again.

In this episode, Kristen Fortney, cofounder and CEO of BioAge, joins Vijay Pande, founding partner of a16z Bio + Health, and Olivia Webb, editorial lead, to discuss the biology of aging, how she started a company, and some fun things — like how long a hypothetical venture capitalist can expect to live.  Additional reading:Greg Egan, whose writing inspired Kristen, has a list of his books on his website

In this episode, Paul Keckley, the managing editor of the Keckley Report and a health policy expert, joins Julie Yoo, general partner at a16z, and Olivia Webb, editorial lead at a16z. Together, they talk about how payors and providers are reacting to changing tailwinds,  how employers are demanding more in today's market, the opportunities and challenges for startups in a consolidated industry, and what the next few years of health policy might bring. Additional reading:The Keckley Report

Jakob Uszkoreit and Vijay Pande discuss all things AI — from Jakob's time at Google Brain, to how humans (and computers) process language, to Inceptive’s belief in the promise of RNA, and how Jakob believes we’re entering inflection point territory. You can also find a full transcript of this episode on our website.Additional reading:Attention is All You NeedA Decomposable Attention Model for Natural Language Inference